Ocean of Storms is an hour long theatre piece, inspired by the rich metaphoric potential of space travel. It uses a loose narrative of two quasi-angels searching for a small girl lost in a city, to explore a range of ideas about home, proximity and intimacy.

Two female figures on a steel mesh set.

A delicate model of the earth is unpacked from a silver flight case, tea
making equipment from another.

A further dimension is opened as the piece's one true dialogue is located;
the spare conversations between Al at mission control and Jo, whose damaged craft will
almost certainly break up under the strain of reentry. Made, in part, as a reaction
against the aggression and brutal structuring of
Voodoo City Ocean of Storms was a consciously
gentle, elegiac piece. It relies heavily on texts both pre-written and worked up
from improvisation. These are delivered via radio microphones to allow us to achieve
a consistency of tone and volume, a sense of both intimacy and distance, and a delicate
mix with the extra-ordinary soundtrack by Webster-West Ink who were commissioned after a
track of theirs was played at a friend's party.
One of the most difficult of Stan's pieces to make, Ocean of Storms still feels like
unfinished business. It was commissioned with a Barclays New Stages award and opened
at MAC, Birmingham before progressing to The Royal Court, London and a national tour.
Throughout we continued to work hard on the piece presenting revised versions at
various stages on the tour. The astronaut strand of Ocean of Storms formed the basis
of the radio series So Bring Me Down and
the aesthetic of collaged fragments led directly to the next touring show
Simple Maths.

(from the original programme)
When we started, Ocean of Storms named the second lunar landing site.
Now it is that region electronic voices pass through to and from their
satellites; it is the distance a hand must travel to touch a face; it
is the fluid in an eye watching from afar.

Everything has grown at once more simple and more complicated since we
left. Being an astronaut is now maybe just about being away and hearing
the voice of home in your ear, and yet now these astronauts are not astronauts,
nor are they angels, Gods or spies. This is not quite a play, poem, exorcism or
experiment. We cannot say exactly what anything is anymore, instead we seek to
describe a world by orbiting round it.